


The Joker's Scrapbook

by SmutWithPlot



Series: Patient Files: The Joker [3]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-17
Updated: 2015-09-17
Packaged: 2018-04-21 04:11:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4814468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SmutWithPlot/pseuds/SmutWithPlot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Oh, you know I never keep count." "I do." "Oh, don't I know it. And I love you for it."</p><p>It's a lie, of course. The Joker has a very detailed, exact documentation of all of his crimes, and no one who's seen it has lived to tell the tale. But as the madman's health is failing, it's a race to the clock to find the mother of all snuff journals: The Joker's Scrapbook.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Interrogating Harley

“Bring her in.”

Chattering of doors, sliding metal and cold justice. The woman named Harleen Quinzel is brought into the interrogation room, and the cameras are rolling. I don’t know if there’s any tape in them, and if it even matters, but they’re there all the same.

She’s quiet, for a change, bright, clever blue eyes watching one of my detectives saunter in. I watch for conversation, but I don’t think that Morris is one of his.

“…You said you had something for me.”

She leans forward, hands on the table, cuffs like iron bracelets on the table. “Yeah. But I want to know how he’s doing.”

“He’s doing just fine, Miss Quinzel. As I’ve said before.”

“I want to _see_ him.”

“I said he’s _fine_.” I know she doesn’t believe me, but it still baffles me that she cares. Especially after all he’s done to her. “Besides, who the hell would try to hurt the Joker? We all know how skilled he is in hand-to-hand combat.”

“Batman could!” She’s like a child, begging a parent for another sweet. “I know you guys have him all locked up, caged like an animal! It’s not right!”

“He _is_ an animal! No one with his kill count is human.” I slide the file in my possession in front of her, and she pointedly doesn’t look. “Do you see _this_? That’s another three hundred _dead_.”

“I want to see him.”

“And I want to see him _dead_. We don’t always get what we want.” No one wants the Joker like I do. Except maybe _him_. But there’s no way in hell anyone else is going to get their hands on this case if I can help it. It’s _mine_.

Her jaw quivers, and there are tear stains on her cheeks. “You said if I cooperated—”

“I said we would _try_. But the stuff you’re giving me is no good, Harleen.” I toss another file, this one her statement. “What is this? A shit ton of hearsay, and maybes. The mindless boastings of a madman. I can’t prove any of this! Until you get me that file, your testimony is null and void.”

Her face wrenches, and she begs me with her hands. “Look, I’m doing all I can to help—”

“It’s not enough, Harleen!” I shouldn’t bark, shouldn’t let my temper get the better of me, but _damn it_ , she makes me furious! How could _anyone_ defend a monster like him? “I need some goddamned proof! Even _his_ testimony means nothing to me! Your testimony means nothing to me! You’ve lied to me so many times, I just can’t trust you!”

She bursts into tears, and the first three times, I bought it. This time, I just pull out another file entry, this one with more pictures. “This was the _last_ time you came to me with information regarding your _Puddin_ ’. And it turns out this was just another ploy to get his scheme around us!”

“It’s different this time, I swear—!”

“THAT’S WHAT YOU SAID LAST TIME! Look, Harleen!” Another file, and she’s still sobbing, as I spread out the pictures like cards on the table. “You see this?!” I stab at a picture of her, garbed in red and black, blowing a kiss to the camera as she and her madman robbed Gotham Central _again_. “This was a week and a half after we spoke last, and you sprung him! You come in here to spy on us! So he can get out again!”

“No!” Her pigtails bounced around her, authentic looking tears on her cheeks. “No, it’s not! I swear it!”

“I don’t believe you, Harleen! You’re a turncoat! A turncoat and a liar! You lie to me, you lie to him! Which is it?! Get some sense! Make up your mind! Because all I hear are lies!”

“I swear, it’s different!”

“Oh yeah, and why is that?”

“It’s… Because it just is, okay?!” She coughs on her sobs, and buries her face in her hands, fists in her eyes. “I just… I can’t tell you, but it is…”

I sigh, the detective beside me eyeing her with disgust. “Get her out of here.”

“NO!” She shrieks, and she bursts from her seat, face red with grief and anger. “NO! NO, I WON’T!” She launches herself at me, but the guard behind her catches her by her jumpsuit. “YOU SON OF A BITCH! I SWEAR, I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU! GIVE HIM BACK! GIVE HIM BACK TO ME!”

“We’re done! Get her out of here!”

“NO! HE’S MINE! I WANT HIM BACK!” She screeches as the drag her back down the hall, wrenching herself from their grip, but between the five of them, someone else grabs a limb, until they’re carrying her more than leading, her body thrashing in the air. “NO! LET ME GO! I WANT HIM BACK!”

There’s the slamming of a door that cuts off her mad rambling, and I curse, tossing the file to the table. I’ve screwed it up, I’m sure, but I also know that this nut _won’t crack_. We’ve had her here for questioning for weeks now, and she’s not giving us anything viable. One day, she’s just stubbornly quiet, and other days she’s manipulative, and some days she’s violent… We leave her to think for a few days, and still, nothing.

_I’m running out of options_. The fact of the matter was, the Joker would be dead soon. And if they didn’t get their hands on his Scrapbook, they would never know the sheer amount of atrocities he’d committed. All those souls and victims, each case as cold as the next one. No closer to solving any of them. He’d had a glimpse…

“Someone call Blackgate. Maybe if we can get them an audience, we can get somewhere.”

Morris looked at me like I was mad. “You nuts? You can’t put the two of them in a room together.”

“I need _something_. She’s giving me shit by herself, all she talks about is him. And maybe she’ll get him to talk.”

Morris snorted, but walked out of the room anyway. “Sure thing, Boss. Your funeral.”

I sighed, collecting my notes. _Don’t I know it._


	2. Cold Case

Arkham Island. In a town as old and cold as Gotham, the closet full of skeletons was Arkham. Kind of horrifying, when you considered the demons that Gotham wore openly. One of its most infamous denizens was the Joker. For a man with no name, no history, and no rationale, the Asylum was as close as it got to a home base for him. You can learn a lot from the way a person lives. Consider the man who calls this godforsaken place his home. An island covered in rock, carved into by ambitious fools with more money then sense. A mansion of grandeur that had become a tragic quest to cure the demons of the human mind. It had then become a sandbox for the insane and mentally ill, and whatever monsters and ghosts that possessed the people became trapped here, a sanctuary to all of the rotten and wrong things of the city. If Blackgate was where you swept unpleasantness under the rug, Arkham was the hidden room only accessible by a crawlspace that held bodies buried there decades before you had been born.

…I’m not generally such a melodramatic person, but even I have to admit that there’s something innately _wrong_ about Arkham. It’s not as hostile and challenging as most of Gotham is, a dark romantic style that you have to learn to appreciate. No, Arkham is like that spider’s web, dangerous and poisonous, and yet it draws you in like a siren. It’s a long road that bridges the Gotham mainland to Arkham Island, and every inch of it feels like it’s endless, stretching in some surreal test to see if you really want to get there, while the lights beckon in their forbidden song. I avoid going here whenever I can, but sometimes sacrifices must be made.

It takes a good deal of power to get an audience with the Joker. A large part of which is that he’s just so outright unpredictable, and damnably persuasive. Despite the fact that everyone knows how dangerous he is, all it takes is the right person and the right turn of phrase, and he can convince almost anyone to do almost anything. He’s convinced guards to let him out of his cell and then gone to break custody and escape the asylum. Sometimes he takes it over, like a child playing at war games. Other times he just pulls a fire alarm and unlocks all of the cells just to watch the chaos unfold. And sometimes, just to be contrary and keep you in suspense, he’ll behave like a perfectly rational, sane individual, making you second guess his reputation and wonder if maybe it’s all a ruse, because how bad could he be?

The worst. That’s how bad. And worse than that. He takes great sport in outdoing himself, doing something more cruel, more evil, more depraved than last time. And unfortunately, I’ve made it onto his list of favourite playthings. Harleen is fooling herself — he cares for no one. He _can’t_ care. Anyone with a heart couldn’t do the horrible, terrible things he’s done. And particularly not with such relish and enjoyment. It wasn’t right. He wasn’t _human_. He was the worst kind of monster, and he ought to be put down. Problem was, the damned thing was so resilient, so _stubborn_ he just quite simply refused to die.

A number of doctors had tried. Ice baths, injections, overdoses, mind-addling drugs, poisons. Police officers who’d emptied clips into him, only to hear his wheezing, demented laughter as he overcame them anyway. He was _beyond_ this mortal realm, a demon in the guise of a man. He would only cooperate if he deemed it amusing at the time, and god help you if he didn’t.

It’s seven layers of security. I’ve come prepared, wearing nothing but my ID card. Shoes that are easy to take off and put back on again. No jewelry but my wedding ring, not that I have a wife anymore. He’s seen to that. I fill out the paperwork, decline the offering to buy in-house currency, and begin the long hike to Solitary Confinement.

Even for Solitary, he’s in the Pit, as they call it. It’s a dungeon within a dungeon, locked behind a myriad of doors with different locks, each changed on different intervals. Down and down we go, until they grant me an audience in their own little interrogation room. Their cameras are even more outdated then mine. Little red light flashing from a corner of the room. Doctors watching behind the glass — two for observing him, one on hand with a pair of nurses if he should try to kill me. Or himself. For some obscene reason, they are adverse to the idea of him dying on the asylum grounds, despite attempts to the contrary by some of their more ambitious, sensible doctors. The whole place has this taste of someone watching you, as if the walls and the buildings themselves were alive. Even in that cold, dark room, knowing that there were people in the next room watching, I felt like there was something else _beside_ me, like some kind of ghost or… something. I don’t know if ghosts are real, but every time I come to this place, I always question it.

There’s an alarm buzz before the door opens, and I brace myself. Two guards come in, each of them with a heavy iron chain, the ends of which are attached to the Joker, cuffs at his wrists, cuffs at his ankles. He’s been on good behaviour — no straight jacket today. I feel foolish for even thinking it as the guards attach the restraints to either wall, intending to keep him limited to the small space. He’s grinning at me like the demon he is, face split open in a toothy, bloody smile that doesn’t feel at all welcoming. His eyes burn like hellfire, his hair unkempt and greasy, roots of brown teasing at his scalp. Even without his makeup on, he feels pale and unhealthy in the mechanical lights of the asylum, his skin left in the dark for too long, but I’m sure he likes it just fine that way. His fingers fold neatly together on his lap, leaning easily in his chair as if I were a friend over for a drink and a chat, not a police commissioner come to interrogate a homicidal maniac.

“Well well well… If it isn’t Jimbo, my old friend.” He tilted his head to the side. “Tell me, how _is_ Harls, the little conniving bitch?”

He even spits to one side, as if that were the normal way to punctuate the query, and smiles at me. That damned smile. It keeps me up at night.

“Can’t say as I know.”

His face twists, lips pouting as his brow tightens. “Oh, don’t be that way, Jimmy-boy. I’m not so foolish as all that. I know that my little Harley Quinn has been your toy for some time now.” He leans forward, his voice taking on a lecherous purr. “I know she does like to be tied up and beaten, but don’t forget the aftercare, dear. Even fucktoys need their coddling now and again.”

I sneered at him. “Proud of your handiwork?”

He shrugged, leaning back in his chair. “Scars heal, broken bones will mend. Bruises clear up eventually.” He scratches at his chin, bored with this conversation. “But then, I don’t suppose you’re coming to ask me for tips on how to fuck a broad.” He smirks. “You know how to work the ladies just fine, don’t you?”

He’s just talking at me to get me off center. I should know by now not to play along. I open up my file case, and twist a picture around to him. “Do you remember this?”

He leans forward, and blinks. “I might.”

I bite my tongue to keep from giving him a date. To lead him along. Some crooks like to play dumb. This one likes to play crazy. “It might be one of your oldest crimes. Cold case I’ve been working on. Has your fingerprints on it.”

“Does it, now?” His eyes widen in mock innocence. “My, I should have been more careful. Worn gloves or the like.”

I drop another one. Morgue shots. “Did you kill Don Lino Falcone?”

His face splits into another one of his Cheshire grins. “Why, Commissioner. I thought you’d never ask.”


End file.
